(Backwoodz)
The rapper-producer duo muster a breakup record with glistening beats and lovelorn lyrics that mull over grievances without resolve

Tough as they may be, breakups make for good material. Doomed! is Open Mike Eagle’s entry into that wide canon – sitting alongside Tyler, the Creator’s Igor and Ye’s 808s & Heartbreak in the alt-rap subcategory – and finds the LA-via-Chicago rapper every bit as wide-eyed, caustic and, at-times, crushing as those who’ve Kübler-Rossed their way out of a relationship before him. Out of lemons, lemonade, and all that.

In fact, without the disintegration of his five-year relationship, he and Kenny Segal – the feted Low End Theory-reared producer who helms the entire project – might have been resigned to merely cropping up as occasional features on each other’s records forever. The breakup gave sessions a focal point, and half a decade’s grievances to mull. Or, as Eagle puts it languidly over lounge glockenspiel on Streets of Rage: Public Arguments Edition: “These is true stories told loosely.”

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• OFC’s 11 votes could prove crucial in Fifa election

• Stance shows continued backing from smaller nations

The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) has declared its support for Gianni Infantino following demands from Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation for the Fifa president to resign, in a development that further highlights world football’s civil war.

After a meeting of its executive committee in Fiji on Wednesday, the OFC issued a statement on Friday praising “the progress achieved over the last decade” by Fifa in its first public comments since the abandoned World Cup sell-off plan emerged this month.

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Preliminary findings show fan blade broke off shortly after takeoff on 10 July flight from Greece to Germany

Broken engine parts were responsible for shattering a window on a Ryanair plane, causing a passenger to be partly sucked out mid-flight in July, US investigators have said.

A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found an engine fan blade broke off shortly after takeoff on the 10 July flight from Greece to Germany.

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Rolling coverage of the latest and economic news, as US sells 30-year bonds at highest borrowing costs since 2001

The oil price is moving higher this morning, which will add to those inflation fears.

Brent crude has risen by almost 1% to $87.88 a barrel, having fallen yesterday for the first time in over a week.

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Cartoon royalty were lined for a live-action toon hybrid Coyote vs Acme. Then it was shelved as a tax write-off. But its cast, crew and fans fought for its release. Three years later it’s set to be a surprise summer hit

Back in 2020, Dave Green started making his new film, Coyote vs Acme. Mixing live action with animation, it would be an unconventional courtroom drama that pitched actor Will Forte against a host of 2D Looney Tunes characters – including cartoon royalty such as Foghorn Leghorn, Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny. This, Green believed, would weave a heady spell for cinemagoers of all ages. Six years later, his film is finally about to be released. When Green first called “Action!”, his dark hair was not yet flecked liberally with grey. It is now.

“We’ve held on to a lot of hope these past few years,” Green says from his home in Los Angeles, “and we never really let go of it.”

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Joyce Thomas faces being forced to leave country after losing appeal against deportation

• British widow, 78, told to leave Sweden under Brexit rules

The 78-year-old British widow threatened with removal from Sweden after 21 years has said she has been left feeling sick with worry after being told she had lost an appeal against deportation in a ongoing row over the country’s handling of Brexit.

“I am in shock. I feel sick. An individual’s life is at stake at my age. It is hell. I have done nothing wrong. I don’t take anything from this country. I am self sufficient, I put money in this country, have no criminal record,” said Joyce Thomas from her home in Sweden on Thursday.

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Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, is youngest ever British women’s champion while Supratit Banerjee, 12, becomes England’s youngest ever international master

A new generation took over at the top of British chess on Sunday, when a trio of youthful talents demonstrated their skills on a national stage. Shreyas Royal, 17, of Dartford, Kent, became the youngest ever British champion, breaking Michael Adams’s 1989 record by two months and underlining his status as an emerging world-class talent. Bodhana Sivanandan, aged 11, and Supratit Banerjee, 12, also delivered memorable performances.

First prize at the University of Warwick, Coventry, was £10,000.

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They may have sold Robbie Ure, their top scorer, to Sevilla, but the team from Uppsala have good reason to believe they can finish the job

For most teams, losing a forward with 15 goals in 15 games midway through the season, amid a historic title chase, might be cause for panic. Sirius, the runaway Allsvenskan leaders, are not most teams.

“I’m actually really confident,” says Henrik Castegren, the club captain, when asked about the team’s ability to adapt after Robbie Ure’s move to Sevilla for a club-record fee, reported to be £5.6m plus add-ons. “I’m really happy for Robbie, but also quite sad because I enjoyed playing with him a lot. I think he was by far the best player in this league for the first six months [of the season] … but, with that being said, I’m feeling quite comfortable with us moving forward.”

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Our once-mild climate is increasingly extreme – and how we talk about it is now another front in the culture wars

In this fragmented but supposedly mild country, watching and talking about the weather forecast is meant to be a reassuring, unifying activity. Collectively, we have created and maintained a national climate narrative of small disappointments and pleasures. The first weather forecaster to appear on British TV, George Cowling, made his debut on the BBC in January 1954, predicting that “tomorrow would be rather windy”, but “a good day to hang out the washing”. For most of the 72 years since, such brief, carefully calibrated broadcasts have provided people from Aberdeen to Penzance with practical information, small talk and minor grumbles about essentially the same situation: living in a country where the weather is constantly changing, in a paradoxically unchanging way.

Yet like the traditional British climate, that common weather culture may now be evaporating. “Met Office considers issuing red ‘extreme heat warning’ across Britain while nation enjoys ‘incredible summer’,” said the headline above the forecast on the GB News website on Monday, caught between terror and delight at the latest heatwave. As the climate crisis has affected this country in more and more unmistakable but uneven ways, TV weather forecasters have increasingly struggled to find the right language to describe this transformation’s daily consequences. Their struggle influences and exemplifies that of many Britons to understand, and work out what we think about, the apparent end of the weather patterns we expected to shape our whole lives.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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There’s a lot to unpack as this proud son of Toronto closes in on 40 – from his gambling to his very public dates. Here goes!

Even if you can only name a handful of rappers, Drake is probably one of them. Not so many years ago, he was among the planet’s biggest celebrities, named in the same breath as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and breaking chart records set by the Beatles. Many of his dozens of hit singles – Work, One Dance, Hotline Bling and God’s Plan – were ubiquitous, among the last truly crossover radio hits.

Drake is still landing chart spots (if not critical acclaim), but now it’s his foray into the “creator economy” that’s raising eyebrows – shilling for a crypto casino, fraternising with manosphere influencers and, just last weekend, live-streaming dates with OnlyFans models. So what’s this all about? Is Toronto’s once-golden boy having a midlife crisis – or is it a media-savvy pivot? Here’s how Drake got caught up in the “creator economy”.

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Anthropic's Claude Code appears to be having trouble displaying summaries of its "thinking," according to several bug reports, while the underlying reasoning tokens still cost money. According to complaints, the API has been returning empty thinking blocks for Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 5 even when users explicitly request summarized thinking. Models from several sources can display their "thinking," a process that gives models additional tokens to reason through complex problems before producing a response. Software with this capability delivers a summary that explains how it tackled a task. Some can also indulge in "extended thinking," though this capability is now deprecated. Developers often enable "thinking" in the hope that it produces better results, at the cost of additional tokens and latency. Developer Michael Hood has noticed that some of Anthropic's models are currently not always good at sharing their thinking. "As of 2026-07-16 ~15:00Z, the API returns empty thinking blocks (thinking: '', signature only) for Claude Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 5, even when display: 'summarized' is explicitly requested — including when injected directly into the raw request body," Hood recently observed. We're told this issue is under investigation but doesn't appear to be a broad, ongoing concern. It may simply be an artefact of tests that change how Anthripic displays summaries. Similar behavior involving missing thinking blocks has been reported in Claude Code for VS Code. Another bug report claims thinking block summaries are being truncated while token bills are not adjusted accordingly. "The thinking is generated (and billed) in full; a portion of the summary stream is silently dropped," the anonymous author claims. This particular claim, that customers are being billed for text not delivered, may follow from a misunderstanding of Anthropic's terms: "You are charged for all thinking tokens generated, even when collapsed or redacted," the company's documentation explains. Under that legalese, a thinking summary costs the same as the full output. And it's unclear whether bug-based truncation would change the billing picture. "Thinking has a cost: the tokens Claude spends reasoning are billed as output tokens, even when the thinking text isn't returned to you, and they count toward max_tokens alongside the response text," the company explains. To reduce spending on thinking, customers are advised to lower their budget setting or disable thinking. Separately, the Anthropic API has been seen terminating data streams during long-running thinking sessions. There have been at least seven other related API bug reports, but the streaming issue identified by developer Hector Bernstorff describes client-side defects. The Register understands this particular issue has to do with tuning network behavior, specifically to terminate or retry long running requests. Work is ongoing to balance perceived latency against the risk of requests getting stuck. "Claude Code ships updates nearly every day, and reports from the community like these GitHub issues are a big part of how we catch problems quickly," an Anthropic spokesperson told The Register. "We're grateful to the developers who take the time to file them, and we'll keep fixing things as they come up." ®

De vervelendste Nederlander van Nederland Johan Vollenbroek legt het hele land plat met z'n gedraal over stikstof en dat er daarbij wat wanhopige boeren voor de trekker springen is een fijne bijkomstigheid. Probleem is een beetje dat ieder lapje groen in Nederland waar een verdwaalde roerdomp in een slootje staat te koekeloeren wordt aangeduid als Natura 2000 - in Brabant alleen al zijn dat er 21 (!) - en dan wordt ondernemen (of woningen bouwen) wel héél lastig. Zeker als professioneel klager Vollenbroek, die alle komma's weet te staan omdat hij verder toch niks te doen heeft, telkens weer met een pak papier in de ligfiets naar een rechtbank sukkelt. 

Welnu, in Den Bosch is het momenteel druk met TREKKERS omdat de provincie Brabant (nadat Vollenbroeks MOB een procedure was gestart) de vergunningen van vijf pluimveehouders heeft ingetrokken, 'vanwege de grote hoeveelheid stikstof die vanuit hun boerderijen op naastgelegen natuurgebieden terechtkomt'. De boeren werkten gewoon volgens de regels en leverden zelfs plannen in voor '50 en 85 procent minder uitstoot' (de meeste boeren zijn echt bereid om mee te denken), maar de provincie liet de boeren eerst in de stront zakken en daarna stikken. Vollenbroek op zijn beurt: "Zelfs bij 90 procent verminderen zouden ze nog piekbelaster zijn. Ze hadden op die locatie nooit een vergunning mogen krijgen." En hier stopt het natuurlijk niet, want Vollenbroek probeert van nog 'tientallen' andere bedrijven de vergunning af te pikken. ENFIN, veel Boze Boeren in Brabant dus, allemaal met de trekker over de snelweg, iedereen boos alsook verontwaardigd, het debat begint 09.30 uur en is LIVE.
Update - Even voor de duidelijkheid: de vergunningen zijn dus nog niet definitief ingetrokken, daar is dit debat ook voor, maar dat had u vast wel door
Update - Caroline vandaag in De T. over de kwestie hierrrr

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DEN BOSCH (ANP) - Op meerdere wegen rond Den Bosch staan files door tractoren die naar het provinciehuis trekken. Boeren protesteren daar tegen het plan van de provincie Noord-Brabant om de vergunning van vijf pluimveebedrijven in te trekken.

Op de A59 is de vertraging rond 09.30 uur het grootst. In de richting van Den Bosch staat er bij Oss-Oost en Kruisstraat twintig minuten file. Het verkeer staat daar veelal stil, meldt de verkeersinformatie van de ANWB.

Het verkeer rijdt ook langzaam op verschillende plekken op de N279. Vooral tussen Boerdonk en Den Bosch kunnen bestuurders korte files verwachten. De vertraging schommelt daar tussen vijf en tien minuten.

Op de A2 staat het verkeer ook stil. De ANWB weet niet zeker of dit door de boeren komt. De vertraging is daar ruim tien minuten.

DEN BOSCH (ANP) - Bij het boerenprotest in Den Bosch blijven vele tientallen actievoerders arriveren. Rond 09.00 uur stonden er ruim honderd mensen op het plein voor het provinciehuis. Om 09.30 uur debatteren binnen de Provinciale Staten over het voornemen van het provinciebestuur om de vergunning van vijf pluimveeboeren in te trekken.

De sfeer op het afgezette plein is gemoedelijk. Er wordt feestmuziek gedraaid en later op de ochtend komen meerdere sprekers. Onder hen zijn onder anderen FDF-voorman Mark van den Oever en bestuurders van landbouworganisatie ZLTO. Met twee graafmachines is een grote omgekeerde vlag boven een toegang naar het plein gespannen.

Het terrein voor het provinciehuis is afgezet met betonblokken. Tientallen tractoren staan even verderop geparkeerd. Op spandoeken staan teksten als "Vergund = Vergund", "No Farmers No Food" en "Als de boer verhuist, verhuist het platteland mee". Op een groot videoscherm kan het spoeddebat worden gevolgd. ZLTO zei vooraf 2000 mensen te verwachten.

AMSTELVEEN (ANP) - Femke Markus fietst vanaf volgend jaar voor Team Visma | Lease a Bike. De 29-jarige wielrenster uit Nederland komt over van SD Worx-Protime en krijgt een belangrijke rol in de voorjaarsklassiekers en zware koersen.

"Ik kijk ernaar uit om daarvan te leren en mezelf verder te ontwikkelen", vertelt Markus op de website van haar nieuwe ploeg. "Met ondersteuning van onder meer The Athlete's FoodCoach en een aanpak die sterk op wetenschap is gebaseerd, denk ik dat ik hier nog stappen kan zetten."

Teammanager Rutger Tijssen is blij met de komst van Markus: "Femke is een renster die perfect past binnen het profiel dat we zochten voor onze klassiekerploeg. Ze heeft de afgelopen jaren laten zien dat ze goed uit de voeten kan in selectieve wedstrijden en onder lastige omstandigheden. Tegelijkertijd geloven we dat er binnen onze omgeving nog ruimte is voor verdere ontwikkeling en kijken we ernaar uit om samen met Femke die volgende stappen te zetten."

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De AEX-index op het Damrak heeft vrijdag het recordniveau verder aangescherpt. Vooral de dataleveranciers RELX en Wolters Kluwer deden het goed in de hoofdindex, met koerswinsten van rond de 3 procent. De stemming werd gesteund door hogere slotstanden op Wall Street, waar de S&P 500-index een nieuw record bereikte door optimisme dat de Federal Reserve de rente in september niet gaat verhogen.

De AEX noteerde kort na opening van de markt 0,3 procent hoger op 1123,44 punten. Donderdag steeg de hoofdindex al 0,7 procent tot een nieuw slotrecord van 1119,59 punten. De MidKap klom 0,4 procent tot 1134,51 punten. De beurs in Frankfurt won 0,6 procent. Parijs en Londen bleven vrijwel onveranderd.

wjonge has added a photo to the pool:

This is not an exhaustive list of links, but more of a beginning in the hope that other MeFites have found other news stories and analysis that are relevant to a discussion about what is happening to this once so great power. It was inspired by the Greenland post, so the first is The U.S. Army's 'Big Experiment' in the Arctic Cold(NYT gift link)

Trump orders Pentagon to redesign US aircraft carrier to use steam catapults to launch jets (The Guardian)

"So I said, 'What is this?' 'Sir, this is our digital catapult system'", Trump went on. "It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it's very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers – I said, 'What system are you going to be'– 'Sir, we're staying with digital.' I said, 'No you're not. You['re] going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good'".

USS Abraham Lincoln sailors tried to jump overboard amid extended deployment – reports (The Guardian)

Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran. Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.

Trump reportedly hid in catering container to board secret flight in Turkey amid Iran threat (The Guardian) The US war on Iran is spinning out of control (Opinion piece, Mohamad Bazzi/The Guardian)

After Trump launched his war in late February, Iran effectively shut the strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil and liquid gas supplies passed each day. As a result, some oil producers, especially Saudi Arabia, shifted their exports to the Red Sea. But the Houthis are able to disrupt international shipping through the Red Sea, as they did after Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2023, when the Yemeni militia began firing missiles and drones at ships near the Bab el-Mandab strait. That caused insurance premiums to soar and forced companies to reroute vessels around Africa, adding weeks to a typical journey and increasing the cost of goods in Europe and elsewhere. So far, the Houthis have not tried to disrupt ships passing through the Red Sea on a large scale, via the Bab el-Mandab chokepoint, which comes closest to Yemeni territory. But on 20 July, the militia declared a blockade on Saudi vessels transiting the Red Sea, claiming it was in retaliation for an air and naval blockade that the kingdom had imposed years ago against Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The Houthis have since attacked several ships in the Red Sea, forcing Saudi Arabia to reroute nearly half of its oil exports through a longer and more expensive journey around the southern tip of Africa. On 25 July, the Houthis claimed to have struck "sensitive" oil infrastructure sites inside Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones, disrupting the kingdom's Red Sea export hub of Yanbu. The Saudis have retaliated with air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. Like Iran's other neighbors in the Persian Gulf, the Saudi economy has been hit hard by the war, especially Tehran's closure of the strait of Hormuz and its attacks against energy infrastructure in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia's GDP decreased by nearly 5% in the second quarter of 2026, compared with the same period last year. Saudi leaders are blaming Iran for the latest Houthi escalation, and they've vowed to establish an international maritime coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea. On Thursday, the Saudi defense ministry announced that 14 states – including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan – had agreed so far to join the coalition. But it's unclear how this new Saudi-led effort would differ from an existing naval protection mission, organized by the European Union and known as Operation Aspides, which is focused on the Red Sea.

As Hegseth pursues a 'High-T' military, here's what to know about testosterone replacement (PBS) It's not like the knowledge isn't there: McMaster busts myths of future warfare (Army)

Soldiers need to understand the cultural, tribal, religious, ideological and economic drivers at the nation and local levels, he explained, to have the situational understanding that is needed. The enemy already has that understanding, he added. In the past, America has not generally understood the psychology of the enemy or even their own, he said. In Pentagon war games conducted in 1964 and 1965, the gamers discovered that in a few years the war would escalate with half a million troops on the ground in Vietnam. The game outcome also predicted an American public losing faith with the war and that lies about winning the war would further erode support. But leaders disregarded the findings, which eventually were borne out. While the American public and its leaders need a better understanding of conflict, Soldiers do as well, he said. Soldiers need realistic training that includes sustained operations in confused and chaotic situations, such as in an urban environment, he said. Soldiers also need special cultural education which emphasizes a sense of empathy for the civilians.

Over on Bluesky, Esoteric Collector looks over the history of TSR and early D&D, and along the way describes and posts photos of the many different dice that could be found in that era.

Het wordt opnieuw een warm weekend met veel zon. Regen hoeven we voorlopig nauwelijks te verwachten. Zondag kan het lokaal zelfs 32 graden worden. Pas later volgende week neemt de kans op stevige regen- en onweersbuien mogelijk toe.